White-nose syndrome is a devastating fungal disease that has killed over seven million bats in North America, with implications for understanding how emerging infectious diseases cause mass welfare suffering in wildlife populations.
White-nose syndrome causes suffering and death in bats through disruption of winter hibernation. Affected bats wake repeatedly, depleting fat reserves needed to survive winter, then emerge prematurely into cold conditions where insect prey is unavailable. Death from starvation and cold exposure follows. The scale of mortality - millions of animals - represents enormous welfare suffering from a single emerging disease. Research into treatment approaches including probiotic applications to bat roosts offers potential to reduce welfare suffering while supporting population recovery.